7 Great ways to Write Life Stories

Writing an autobiography, biography or memoir of an interesting life is something that lots of people dream of achieving. What puts them off is knowing where to start, what to write and how to go about it. This course breaks down the steps and shows you how to go about getting your story out of your head and onto the page. It gives you three styles of presentation, one of which will be right for you.

Don't worry if you're not a professional writer. For the time being you need a plan to follow and the desire to see the job through. Correcting grammar and spelling isn't important - it's the last job you should do. Write to the best of your ability to begin with and don't waste too much time going back over what you have already written. The editing process that takes place when you have written everything you wanted to write is where the work of refining your efforts takes place 

Concentrate on gathering notes about the person or organisation you want to write about. Gather any pictures you want to use and if it's relevant, start interviewing people who can add to your story. Keep your interview informal and friendly but tell whoever you're speaking to what you're doing and then record their responses in a notepad for later use.

There are three printable resources to help you with your planning.

A ten point plan. You can use this to record an overview of the whole book you want to write. You can use it again and again when it comes to planning sections and chapters. It will encourage you to find the all important starting place for the book and the chapters inside it. It will also encourage you to consider how the book and the sections in it are ended. On a high? A Low? A cliffhanger? You decide - aided by this planner.

A timeline planner. Again, you can print as many of these as you need and used them to put events and situations into chronological order. This saves you trusting everything to memory and enables you to link events and show how one situation affected another.

Five butts on a goalpost. What's that I hear you asking? It's a sheet to print off that you can use over and over to encourage you to ask those all important questions Who? When? Where? What? Why? How? When you begin to answer these questions you are halfway to recording your content. 

Lastly, try to work in an organised fashion. It doesn't matter if you write directly onto the computer or if you write by hand in a notebook. Keep your resources where they are easy to find should a precious half hour of writing time become available. Having your work to hand will prevent you from wasting valuable writing opportunities if you have to rummage through your house looking for things. Each positive writing experience you have will spur you onto the next.

You will gain more understanding of how to structure your work.

Discover a simple way of putting facts into order.

Information that will help you choose a style of presentation for your work.

You will learn how to create a strong structure that will make writing much easier.

You will learn that your story can be made up largely of visual items as well as text.

Deciding what the strong themes of your story are.

You will learn how to write your story as it's happening.

You will recognise what a recollection is and be equipped to begin writing your own.

Using technology to tell a story.

Using drawings or visuals to tell a story.

You will be able to consider the best place to begin the story.

Creating readable prose

Choosing ways to bring a story to a close.

A template for helping others

Conversation starters for people who are writing biographies.

How to keep writing when your energy drops.

You will learn how to keep writing and developing your story when your ideas and energy dip.

Editing your work in stages to make it shine.

Ensuring you observe the law when you write.

Thinking about future life story projects.